Hugo Award for Best Novel

“Ask Me” by William Stafford is a contemporary poem that compares the author’s life to a river. The reader is instilled with a strong sense of nostalgia, placidity, and introspection as Stafford reflects on his past and the meaning of his actions and life. The theme of this piece is life and its relative pace, similar to a river which is used as an ongoing metaphor Stafford introduces himself early on because this work is a conversation between the author and the reader. In the first stanza,…

In a society where “giving food to starving kids in Africa” has become almost a cliché, utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer makes the readers of The New York Times step back and reevaluate their spending choices in his 1999 essay “The Singer Solution to World Poverty”. Through a mixture of examples and facts Singer calls upon those with excess money, typically used on luxuries, to instead donate that money for overseas aid agencies. In order to persuade the reader to follow through with his…

Conflicts of Stress “A Brief Encounter with The Enemy,” by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a short story about a young man named Luke and his experience in the United States Army. The story begins with Luke describing how he felt getting to “the hill,” through a path that terrified him. While traveling through the path, Luke starts to think about his crush Becky, who takes an interest in him right before deploying. She gives him her email to keep her up to date on his adventures during deployment.…

As one of the best American films in the western genre, Unforgiven uniquely portrays a real culture through it’s setting; a pastiche of nineteenth-century Western style, which emphasizes the nature of law and order as the only thing that stands between civilization and chaos. Being both the director and the producer, Clint Eastwood constructs Unforgiven as a self-reflexive medium; which means the film’s aesthetic would consciously make the audience aware of the devices of the film’s construction…

though his trials that he is innocent, hope that he can get through prison, and hope that he can get. Then again everyone in Shawshank is innocent. There was allot of similarities to this film and novel. The biggest similarity was the dialog of the characters. Many things that Red said were the same in the novel and movie. Even some of the big events were similar. Andy’s…

In one of Shakespeare's tragedies-Othello, the most important character is not Othello but Iago. He is the one who builds us the story and bring the story to a climax. As an effective rhetorician, Iago uses various persuasive and rhetorical devices to manipulate characters in the story especially Othello. To achieve his revenge, Iago shows his honesty and loyalty in front of people, feigns to not share information or misinformation he wants to share along with a large amount of evidence,…

Women have always struggled to break through an invisible glass ceiling that separates them from their goals. Women are kept from attaining higher positions in business, they are kept from studying math and science, and are deterred from playing certain sports. However, once upon a time women were kept from being themselves. Many women were discouraged from trying to learn at all, instead kept in the confines of the home. Virginia Woolf’s “What if Shakespeare Had Had a Sister?” brings to light…

“I’ll never let go.” These words came from award winning actress, Kate Winslet, in the film, Titanic. In this film, Kate plays the dynamic character of Rose. Rose shows emotions of happiness, sadness, boldness, vulnerability, and nervousness, which all came together to make Rose’s character a vibrant and essential part of the film. Based on Rose’s choices and how she used her body and voice, she created a vulnerable, impetuous character. According to, dictionary.com, to be impetuous is to act…

Photography is the key element of mise en scene that determines how an audience will interpret the visual information in film. Orson Welles used the photography of his 1941 film Citizen Kane to emphasize aspects of the film he wanted viewers to focus on, and to remove non-essential information from the frame. This was accomplished through various camera tequniques including manipulation of angles and proxemity. Approaching the end of the film there is a scene just after Susan (played by Dorothy…

Crowned Miss World at the young age of 17, debuting in movie industry shortly once, delivering hit movies one once the opposite, bagging a National award, singing at the international level and turning into a diva – Priyanka Chopra has done it all. an attractive and assured miss, she has worked exhausting to achieve the highest of her career and has created a mark for herself while not the support of any godfather within the vaporous dunia. But then, her career hasn’t invariably been a bed of…